Wednesday, October 13, 2010

4 Questions YOU Need To Ask in an Interview

We all know that it's tough to break into Wall Street these days. It's hard enough to even land an interview. So when you get to the interview stage, you want to do everything you can to come away from it with an offer. To that end, prospective monkeys study their little monkey asses off (hopefully using WSO's excellent library of guides) to prepare for all the tricky questions interviewers might throw at them.

What you might be missing the boat on are the questions you should be asking the interviewer. Let's face it: the majority of us have been in interviews where we knew we weren't going to get the job because something didn't feel quite right or the interviewer made it clear through body language or something they said. The last thing any of us wants to hear an interviewer say at the end of the interview is, "Good luck with your job search." But you might be surprised to learn that a simple question from you has the potential to turn the interview around and get it back on track.

You really have nothing to lose by putting the interviewer on the spot if you think the interview is going sideways. It's always better to have the interviewer admit that you're not getting the job on the spot than to have him say, "We'll be in touch." Plus, a lot of banking interviewers are nerds, and it's fun to make them uncomfortable and watch them squirm when you know you're not going to get the job anyway.The first question is the best in my opinion:

"Based upon this interview, what doubts, if any, do you have about my ability to do this job?"That is going to require a fairly specific answer. If you're a moron and you've blown a bunch of easy questions, here is where you can expect to be told as much. Asking this question benefits you in a couple of ways. First, it gives you the opportunity to address perceived weaknesses right then and there. If you can prove that you know your shit and that you just might not have communicated that as well as you could have, you might be able to turn a no into a yes, or at least a maybe. Even if that doesn't work, though, you've still learned about a weakness you need to address in future interviews.